Selbstmord
by lefairy
Summary: A surrealist look at Hermione's coming-of-age gone horridly wrong. Contains strong thematic elements and implied heterosexual and homosexual sex. Please read and review.


Selbstmord  
  
By L.E. Martin, ff.net handle lefairy  
  
Rating: R, for mild language, sexuality and strong thematic elements.  
  
A Harry Potter FanWork  
  
Full introduction and dedications, as well as proper title interjection, are in their correct places.  
  
Warning: heterosexual and homosexual activity implied. This is a surrealist writing, meant to evoke images of love, worship, and death as opposed to strictly defined character actions.  
  
Lyrics from System of a Down. All characters © J. K. Rowling and Warner Bros.  
  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------  
  
I don't think you  
  
Trust  
  
In  
  
My  
  
Self-righteous suicide  
  
I  
  
Cry  
  
When angels deserve to die  
  
Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Hermione. She loved her parents and she loved her schoolwork, as she was able to do so well in this as to make her parents even more proud of her. One day, she demonstrated a great power and a great proficiency for more power. So, her parents, wise beyond their blood, provided for her to attend the greatest wizarding school in all of England. There, they hoped, she would find a home for her unique abilities, personality, and potential.  
  
Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Harry. His parents had been killed when he was just a baby, but their love for him kept him safe for years and years. One day, he demonstrated a great power and a great proficiency for more power. So, his guardians, ignorant and jealous beyond their blood, tried to do everything in their power to make him miserable and to stop him from attending the greatest wizarding school in all of England. The school, however, fetched him one day, and began to show him a world beyond his wildest dreams.  
  
Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Draco. His parents loved him but did not know how to love him well, which would make the little boy sad forever without ever knowing quite why. One day, he demonstrated a great power and a great proficiency for more power. So, his parents, full of expectations, made sure he attended the greatest wizarding school in all of England, for that was there they had attended classes at his age. There, the little boy knew he would be superior and use his sadness to bend the world to his whims.  
  
Then, at this great school, the little girl named Hermione, the little boy named Harry, and the little boy named Draco met for the very first time. They were 11. By the time their stay at the school was finished with them, they would be 18. It would come to pass within that 18th year that they would hurt each other very deeply.  
  
  
  
Selbstmord  
  
It was sweet like candy, but she wasn't quite sure how it had gotten this far. He was touching her, touching her and telling her he loved her body, her eyes….  
  
But he hated her. And she hated him. But he wanted her, and she believed him. She believed him because she wanted to. She believed him because he didn't give her flowers, didn't simper or beg to be let in or even ask permission, really.  
  
Hermione tasted like absinthe. Bitter like wormwood, probably from the thousands of hours between molding pages and rotting binding glue in libraries. But it was tempered with burnt sugary caramel from the strainer, the sounds of her soul. She'd never know that, of course. Strange, Draco thought, everyone thinks she belonged to the boy she'd met in their fourth year at Hogwarts, during the now-infamous Tri-Wizard Tournament. But that was just a rumor…  
  
Traces of blood began to spread into the bedsheets….  
  
She began to turn over and struggle away from his hands, struggling in herself just to fight away the demon feelings of love and sweet, sweet hate.  
  
Of course he loved her…but then again, he loved everyone. Everyone who asked or who he asked. The most perfect secrets, really. No one ever told. No one ever spoke of the liasons, the molten little climaxes in closets, behind closed doors, the salty tongues of sin under standard-issue sheets. But this was Agnu, flame-tongued and butter-backed. This was Rudra, righteously furious and raining monsoons to kill thousands. This was Kali, sprung from the angry forehead of Durga, black as night and eating the bloody dead, gorging herself with her multitude of appendages in the night. This was Christ, healing and slain. This was the Great Bear, yawning and chewing lazily on the moon. 'Different' didn't do this justice.  
  
He'd come back for more. He was Shiva with her. He was Christ. A blonde slut Christ, come to dissolve into tears at his mother's feet.  
  
Of all the things Hermione had learned in her books, she'd not learned how to be a goddess.  
  
--------------------------------------------------{@~~ ~~@}--------------- --------------------------------------  
  
***dedicated to anyone who ever found the truth in pain***  
  
***dedicated to libertine, bliss-chan, and rube, my betas***  
  
***dedicated to sepentarael, irrylath, and everyone who has ever loved or betrayed me***  
  
you are all forgiven  
  
Chapter 1: You wanted to.  
  
  
  
Harry Potter noticed it first, when Hermione neglected to take any notes at all during one of their Defense Against the Dark Arts classes.  
  
Ron Weasley caught wind that something was amiss when Hermione didn't show up for Numerology for three classes in a row.  
  
When asked, she's simply smile and say that she was finally getting 'senioritis,' that dreaded muggle disease contracted by almost-graduates around the world. But Harry and Ron knew better. She'd disappear at night. She'd not be in the library or in her dormitory room (they'd ask Parvati and she'd just shrug and hint, without worry, that 'Herm's been a bit caught up, is all, lads!'). Then it just stopped. All of the strangeness.  
  
Hermione looked more tired than before, her blonde mess of hair a bit more limp, her brown eyes a bit more dull. But she smiled more and came to class as before.  
  
Draco Malfoy, on the other hand, seemed to be full of life and vigor. His grey eyes sponged light from everywhere and reflected it in a condescending sort of kindness. He'd say he was sorry.  
  
He smiled at Harry. Twice.  
  
  
  
Chapter 2: Wake up!  
  
She felt as though her bones were cracking when he said he didn't really want her anymore. She'd been thoroughly overwhelmed by him. Then he called her a mudblood slit and much worse, as once one has worshipped a god for a time, he must defile it before he can move on into sin again. She'd wanted to die. She'd wished he'd killed her instead of this. And of course, she couldn't tell anyone, for what would Harry and Ron think of her now, the little mudblood traitor, fucking the enemy.  
  
Day after day, she'd fall apart and not be able to put herself quite back together. She kept sleeping through classes because she couldn't close her eyes at night. She was too afraid to dream, because she always dreamt that she was eating his body….  
  
Then one day the sun shined right onto her face and warmed her skin. It was during Hagrid's Beasts class and it was one of those moments when one remembers what it is to really live. She remembered the joy of her books, the rapture of her triumphs, and for the first time in years, it outweighed her sadnesses, great and small. She'd never be the same, but she never had to be torn apart again. She'd never let herself go like that. How had she lived like that, under clouds she'd made?  
  
The sun kept shining.  
  
  
  
Chapter 3: Father, father, father, father  
  
  
  
And Draco kept smiling at the Boy Who Lived.  
  
And the sun kept shining.  
  
But then the sun shined on that smile and it grew like a weed under the concrete of Harry's skin.  
  
And one day, the concrete broke into stones that would fit perfectly into the palms of hypocrites, and the weeds saw the sun directly and burned to cinders, leaving only stones to be thrown at the sun.  
  
---------{@  
  
Wednesday. Harry felt his way into Draco's wizard robes and played with his belt. Their lips were slick and hot, never stopping their devouring. It was always like this, whenever they were alone. Except they were not alone this time.  
  
A solid, heavy thud broke their fever-paced reverie.  
  
  
  
---------{@  
  
Hermione had needed to stay in the infirmary for a few hours to get the bruises on her head, arm and thigh mended. She might have been released earlier, but she'd been so deeply unconscious that it had been a struggle to rouse her at all.  
  
'There is a terrible anguish in betrayal that no one talks about,' she said to Padma that night. Then she said nothing at all for a very long time.  
  
  
  
Chapter 5: I don't think you trust…  
  
She swallowed back bile, burning yellow-green, every time she was made to sit before food.  
  
She chewed her fingernails into nubs and worried her bottom lip bloody whenever she studied.  
  
She didn't talk to anyone. And no one talked to her.  
  
And one day, she locked herself into the Prefects' bathing room.  
  
It was Wednesday.  
  
And she had her very sharpest golden-edged knife…the one she used to slice her most delicate potion ingredients with. The one that would cut through even unicorn horn as though it was a rapier cutting the wind.  
  
With this in place, she began to undress. In front of the long mirrors by the bath, she examined her body. What had once been full hips and breasts were shadows. She was pale beyond pale, and her cheekbones jutted out to match her ribcage and her pelvis.  
  
Only then did she begin to talk.  
  
'You can convince yourself of anything. You can tell yourself you don't love. You can tell yourself that it's alright to live. But it's not, really. Betrayal hurts so much, and I'm not entirely certain who betrayed whom. Draco told me I betrayed Harry and Ron, but it feels like it was Draco who betrayed me. But there's this empty place where nothing goes inside me. Nothing fits. And maybe this will never make sense, but I have to say it. All of the pain has finally made me totally numb. I'm not hungry, nor tired. My body feels the effects, but the pain doesn't go to my mind anymore. I've got rings an inch deep under my eyes…that's my skull, I guess. When I smile, look…it's not natural. I'm not meant to feel good things anymore. It's all gone to hell. I'm in hell. I'm already dead, I think. They were entangled together, and it's the only thing I can see behind my eyelids. I used to dream about castles, sometimes, but all I see is Harry and Draco, touching. Draco's fingertips. I remember Draco's fingertips, on my breasts, inside me…on my skin they felt really smooth, but inside, and I'm not sure why, I could feel every callus, every crevice. There are so few pains that can even be compared to this.  
  
'It…I'll try and describe it. It feels like it's really cold in your lower ribcage, but right around your lower left heart, it's a blunt hot pain. But the worst part is the searing bit, right in the middle of your chest, and it's like someone put something very sour into you and its dissolving, because it flows down your arms and legs, making you flash hurt, then stay very, very numb.  
  
'I live like that every second of every day. There are no pleasures anymore. Will it hurt if I….'  
  
Hermione took her knife by the blade and squeezed. Blood dripped down her knobby wrist and between her gaunt fingers. And it didn't hurt. But it did make her smile.  
  
'Heh.'  
  
She opened her hand and let the knife clatter to the ground. She could hear that the mermaids painted in fresco on the walls had called for help, but she tuned out their frightened chatter. She concentrated on the sound the blood made on the marble floor.  
  
Drip. Drip. Wet and sharp. Why couldn't water sound that good?  
  
Drip. Drip.  
  
'Heh.'  
  
She bent over and picked up the knife, barely glancing in the mirror to see the row of vertebrate casting a very defined shadow down her back and shoulders. She walked over to the edge of the bath and stood, looking into the water. She inched her toes over the edge and flexed them around the cold edge, a little bit of steam gathering under her big toes. Without a single thought, she dug the knife straight into her chest, ripping through herself like a rabid animal that only wants to stop the pain anyway it can. She fell forward into the hot water, knees first as they buckled immediately, and just as her face found its dark refuge from the sun, she was no longer alone. 


End file.
